Lapvona(24)

Marek had met Father Barnabas the afternoon he arrived at the manor. He had expected the priest to be a large, virile northerner—he’d imagined that any man of authority must have blue eyes—but he looked like an average Lapvonian, only dressed in a long black robe. It intimidated Marek, as he’d never spoken to anyone so educated before. What Marek couldn’t tell yet was that the priest was a charlatan. Yes, Father Barnabas had been educated at the seminary, but poorly; he’d been a terrible student. He loved not the Christ but himself and the thrill of keeping people in line. He liked wearing his habit, and he liked the preposterous authority that his position granted him. Since his assignment in Lapvona, he had not given any real sermons. He simply translated Villiam’s rule into language that sounded vaguely religious. If the Lapvonians had any sense, he thought, they would have noticed long ago that the bandits only raided the town when there were rumors of villagers hoarding foodstuffs after a plentiful harvest. They didn’t understand that their crops were not taken as necessary taxes, but were simply sold for profit so that Villiam could continue to live so well and rule them. The little gift of religion Barnabas allowed the villagers on Sundays—the church gave out drops of wine and little oats for the Eucharist—was enough to fool them into accepting their poverty and enslavement. The priest had no sympathy for such stupid people. And yet he didn’t see the hypocrisy of his disdain, as he was stupid, too.

Father Barnabas’s head was soft at the top, as though the fat in his face had traveled upward and collected there. His forehead was narrow and wrinkled and jutted out over his brow so that his dark, pinched eyes were always cast in shadows. His nose was thin and pointy, and his cheeks were flat. His mouth was downturned, like he was perpetually smelling something that displeased him. Maybe it was the stink of the servants, Marek thought. It was impossible not to notice that the servants all smelled distinctly of cooked cabbage. Even Lispeth, who was young and pretty, had breath that smelled sour and hard. Often when a servant passed, the scent of rotten eggs lingered. This was because the servants’ diet consisted mainly of cabbage, while Villiam, Dibra, Father Barnabas, and now Marek were served every imaginable food from the manor’s lush garden, farm, kitchen. It had been immediately apparent to Marek that Villiam had a very different appetite than his father’s. Food disappeared into his mouth to no effect, as though the lord contained a great void inside of him. It made sense to Marek that Villiam was able to evade the shock and sadness of seeing his beautiful son smashed and dead, laid out on the floor. It was as though he had swallowed his son whole and sent him into that darkness. Nobody spoke Jacob’s name, and Marek gathered that he must never mention what had happened. According to Villiam, Marek was his son now.

On the day he’d arrived, Villiam had instructed Marek to pick a servant out of the line to be his personal attendant. He’d chosen Lispeth because she was around his age, and he recognized the mole on her forehead. Jacob had spoken about her often. ‘My servant, Lispeth, has the prettiest mole,’ he’d said.

Lispeth followed Marek everywhere, bathed him, dressed him, opened his curtains in the morning, and blew out the candle at night. While he slept, she sat in a chair at the ready, waiting to attend to any need should the boy wake and make a request for food or drink or diversion. It seemed that Lispeth didn’t need to sleep, or wasn’t allowed to. Marek felt sorry for her that she was so enslaved, but after a while he enjoyed the attention. He had not yet worked up the courage to ask if he could nurse her, but he’d studied the faint swell of her breasts under her gray uniform. He missed his time with Ina, but he was not supposed to venture away from the manor. Villiam told him not to go down into the village. Even the guards barely ventured down there. ‘Hunger is what makes people violent,’ Villiam explained. ‘It turns them into animals.’

Marek loved animals. When he lived down below, his days were full of birds and mice, deer, rabbits, the lambs, of course, moles, squirrels, chipmunks. Each species was stuffed and displayed in the next room, which had been Jacob’s. Marek went there often just to look at the animals. He recognized the ones he had helped Jacob hunt. Now he thought of these animals as old friends—they were all that was familiar to him in this new life at the manor. The first time he’d been served a piece of meat, freshly slaughtered from the manor’s farm, Marek had vomited it up onto his plate, which Villiam found hilarious. And from then on, Villiam had requested feasts of various meats simply to watch the boy chew and sweat and even cry sometimes at having to swallow the stuff. Lispeth always kept a bucket nearby to catch any of her young master’s vomit at the dining table. Marek had gotten used to the sport. Dibra rarely joined them for meals at all. Since Jacob’s death and Marek’s subsequent adoption, she had barely come out of her room.

It was not God’s mercy that had saved the manor from drought, but a tactic long used by lords in seasons without rain. Snow melt from the higher mountains, which fed the streams and rivers—as well as the wells and cisterns—was diverted by a dam to flow into a reservoir hidden inside a grove of pines on the far side of the estate. The moat was always full of water. There were flowers blooming on the lawn at the manor. Everything was fresh in the garden still.

Marek often dreamt of his old life, of the sun through the trees at the edge of the pasture, of walks through the fields and down the road into the village. He dreamt of small moments, of his father’s shadow, of the sound of a lamb stepping up from sleep and butting the door with its head. He missed the soft feel of grass under his feet, the wind, the winter fog in the morning, the clouds. He missed all these things, and although he was of course permitted to go outside and walk the grounds, to lie in the gardens, Marek couldn’t bear to revisit the old world of nature. He felt too ashamed, and too guilty, and too superior all at once.